Asheville Mayor, City Council candidate Q&A: Spending priorities

Oct. 19, 2013

Question

How well do you think the city is managing its spending? What, if any, changes would you make?

Answers

Esther Manheimer: The city is fiscally conservative and responsible, ensuring funding for essential services including police, fire, garbage, recycling, transit, roads, sidewalk construction, and parks and recreation facilities. Our residents also value community investment beyond the basics, and the city has responded — with bike lanes, greenways, afterschool programs and affordable housing. I will continue to demand careful fiscal management and long-term strategic planning in order to sustain healthy reserves, strong projected revenues, and community vitality.

John Miall: Esther Manheimer is chair of the council Finance Committee. Under her leadership the city’s own audits have found “material deficiencies” in two of the past three years; Local Government Commission has noted they aren’t regularly balancing the public’s checkbook; and they have raised taxes and new fees this year 12 percent while revenues were actually UP in the past two years. This is the most inept fiscal management in city history.

We can do better.

Cecil Bothwell: The city has dealt with the tax collapse of the Great Recession and the anti-city onslaught from Raleigh pretty well. Our per capita spending has dropped for the past four years while we have managed to both maintain essential services and increase spending on sidewalks/greenways/bike lanes and other projects. I would prefer that we sharply reduce tax deferment for prospective businesses since I think it a fool’s game.

Mike Lanning: The city must change its spending habits and priorities. The city raised taxes this year and if the spending habits continue it’s only a matter of time before taxes will be raised again. The city needs to focus on providing basic services to the citizens of Asheville. City Council prides itself supporting affordable housing initiatives. If spending habits continue the affordability of living in Asheville will continue to get worse.

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Gordon Smith: During the Great Recession, Asheville tightened its belt, cutting millions from our budget while maintaining quality services. Through that financial storm and facing a hostile legislature, we attracted new businesses, expanded transit service, added sidewalks, added bike lanes, added greenways, rolled out the Big Blue recycling containers, converted our streetlights to LED, and more. Now it’s time for infrastructure investments in the River District and South Slope to attract even more private investment.

Jonathan Wainscott: We have streets that are crumbling, disconnected sidewalks overgrown with invasive vegetation, yet we have money for things like a $350,000 retaining wall on a little-traveled road, $20,000 for an ambulance-ready footbridge ... connecting parcels ... that are only safely accessed by cars, $2M for improvements to the art museum while city park bathrooms are atrocious. I want to post the city’s “checkbook register” online so we can all see how money is collected and spent.

Gwen Wisler: We have neglected our basic infrastructure. Our streets and sidewalks need serious repair. We need to plow money into these areas before we utilize funds for non-vital services. Safety services and funding for streets and sidewalks top my list of spending priorities.